Sunday, March 4, 2012

Grammy's Banana Bread

This is not vegan but everyone deserves a little treat every now and then! This is a great way to use up those bananas you left sitting out too long and are now too squishy to eat. This also happens to be my Grammy's recipe so I only made one tiny alteration to it (omitted the salt) and I will eat this even though it's not vegan, because it reminds me of her.

1/2 cup margarine
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 very ripe bananas
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup sour milk (see below)
pecans are optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bread pan and set aside. Cream together margarine and sugar, add eggs and beat well. Combine your flour and baking soda and mix it well with your egg mixture. Add your milk and mix it again. If you like pecans or walnuts, add them now (probably 1/2 cup). Pour mixture into your greased pan and bake for about an hour. I'm not sure why but sometimes this takes 45 mins and sometimes it takes a full hour. It'll be nice when I get my new oven and can give you better estimates, but until then, just start checking on your bread after 45mins or so! It's done when a knife or toothpick poked in the middle comes out clean.
This entire loaf has 2630 calories so if you cut it into 6 very thick pieces, each would cost you 438 calories. If you cut the loaf into 10 slices, each would run 263 calories. Add more if you added nuts to your mix and add even more if you smothered your slice with butter before you ate it!

A few tidbits for you- baking soda has 1259mg of sodium per tsp so you do not need to add salt to this to get the benefit of the sodium kicking up the flavor. Salt is only added to baked goods for preservation and since the invention of refrigerators and freezers, it's irrelevant. Plus, this bread won't last long enough for it to require preservation. Do your body a favor, and do not add salt to your baked goods!
If you do not have sour milk (and who does these days?), measure 1 cup of fresh milk and add 1 Tbs of either white distilled vinegar OR 1 Tbs fresh lemon juice and allow it to sit for a few minutes before adding it to your dough. It will thicken up and get a little lumpy but it blends beautifully and seems less icky than spoiled milk.